legacycentral bbs

my car requires 30 psi up front and 29psi in the rear. why does subaru recommend more tire pressure in the front when most cars require the same pressure for both front and rears?

I'm not sure that most require the same all around.. but it's because there is quite a bit of weight in the front of the car. This causes the tires to deform slightly, the higher pressure helps keep everythign even across all the tires.

At least I think that's why

MK

Yeah, that's right. The air pressure in the tires is what holds the car up, so you generally need higher pressure on the tires that have more weight on them.

remember, the tire pressure is a "recommended" pressure. What works for some, may not work for others.

Woulda said it was to do with the weight except for my old golf having higher rear pressures than the front and the fronts definately way heavier. My only other thought is that it produces the handling balance that the company wants while giving decent wear rates.

That's really odd. Were the tires the same width in the front as in the back?

the tires are all the same width. the factory tire size, which I follow is 185/70/HR14. The factory recommendation is 30psi front and 29psi rear. I usually put in 33 front and 32 rear. I'm still wondering why they recommend the tires to be inflated this way. Also, what tire pressures do you guys have in your legacy's? I understand the pressure will vary since most of you guys went with wider and lower profile tires.

I generally run 33-35 or so, sometimes 40+ for some more enjoyable driving

MK

The manufacturers are probably trying to dial in a certain grip level without going through the expense of putting on different roll bars and revised damper rates etc... Probably wanted to tweak the handling for the USDM market and wanted a little more grip in the back since Americans are so plum happy with great amounts of understeer and consider it safer. Drop some pressure in the back and they get a little stickier, blam! mission accomplished, cost: $0 (somewhere someone gets a promotion). This is all just a guess, though.

That's quite common to list different pressures for front and back. They do it for many reasons.

They list them really low to make the ride as comfortable as possible.

I run 38 all around. Higher pressures prevent tire roll, which is good for cornering. Don't want to go too high though or your tires never warm up and they deform so that you get a smaller contact patch. You usually drop the teh pressure for more launch traction, which isn't a big deal since most of us have AWD.

You can tune the cornering behavior with tire pressures. For example, less pressure in rear=more oversteer.